IVF, Then Abortion: A New Debate. A report about women aborting fetuses conceived by IVF has even pro-choicers asking: Must women who get fertility treatments carry their pregnancy to term? Despite early ambivalence about motherhood, when she reached her forties, Sarah decided she wanted a baby. She embarked on the often long, arduous process of in vitro fertilization—and conceived, using a donor egg. But as the pregnancy progressed, she felt less sure of her decision, her reservations growing with the embryo inside her. She realized that she didn’t want to be a parent, after all. So she got an abortion. While several years have passed since Sarah (not her real name) solicited the New York University Fertility Center, her case stands out to Dr. Other fertility specialists across the U.S. recall similar stories, those rare exceptions to their usually extraordinarily grateful-to-be-pregnant patients. Until recently, these tales remained enshrouded in the walls of fertility clinics and obstetricians’ offices.
In vitro fertilization becomes moral debate in Naperville; long obscured by abortion fight, concerns over IVF starting to gain spotlight. April 05, 2012|By John Keilman and Melissa Jenco, Chicago Tribune reporters When Katie O'Connor and her husband thought about having a child through in vitro fertilization two years ago, they knew that the technique — which often results in the destruction of surplus embryos — went against the teachings of the Catholic Church in which they had been raised.
But they didn't decide to shun IVF. They decided to leave the church. "Once we knew this would be our path, we started to feel uncomfortable" with the Church's teachings, said O'Connor, 34, of Chicago, now a practicing Lutheran and the mother of a toddler named Gwen. "We were proud of the struggle we went through. The moral and religious debate over IVF is bubbling up in the Chicago area as activists, many of them members of a Naperville Catholic parish, criticize a fertility clinic planned for their town. It was a sign of the growing prominence of an issue that has long been obscured by the nation's passionate dispute over abortion.
Embryo Ethics: Does discarding unused embryos constitute murder? Earlier this year, a Chicago judge allowed Alison Miller and her husband Todd Parish to file a wrongful death suit against the fertility clinic that inadvertently destroyed the couple's frozen embryo. In an unrelated case, three Rhode Island women were awarded compensation for emotional distress and loss of property in a similar case three years ago. Now Missouri and Louisiana have laws protecting the legal rights of embryos; and Virginia even appoints legal counsel to embryos undergoing testing.
With new laws like these on the books, couples with embryos frozen in fertility clinics face serious legal, ethical, and moral dilemmas as they try to decide what to do with them. With growing numbers of couples relying on in-vitro fertilization, estimates place the number of frozen embryos in America at more than 400,000. During in vitro, doctors stimulate the woman's ovaries to release multiple eggs - for most women, one round of stimulation yields 15 or more eggs. Doctor Kamrava Octomom Nadya Suleman. It's perhaps the biggest scandal ever to hit the world of in-vitro fertilization. The so-called "Octomom," Nadya Suleman, gave birth last year to eight children even though she was a single mother with no job and had six previous children in rapid succession through IVF. While Suleman has given interviews and talked about her doctor -- the doctor who helped her give birth to all 14 of her children -- the doctor himself has never spoken about the case, until now.
He is Dr. Michael Kamrava, a 30-year veteran of IVF. Originally from Iran, Kamrava has been roundly condemned by the medical world. Watch the full story tonight on "Nightline" at 11:35 p.m. "It's been very traumatic and quite unexpected," Kamrava said of the treatment at the hands of his medical peers.
Kamrava said he remains confident, however, that in the case of Nadya Suleman, he did the right thing. "Because of the doctor-patient confidentiality, I can't talk about that," he said. Octomom Doc's Detractors.